Sean Day[9] Plott wearing a Day9 Yellow shirt with his logo underneath a brown starcraft jacket

Sean "Day[9]" Plott is a leader of the Starcraft community and a pioneer as an internet personality, having created a highly friendly and interactive streaming community known as the DayKnights. He is known for his competitive Starcraft: Broodwar play, but more importantly for teaching others skills and strategies based on analyzing professional gameplay.

Sean is known to burst into fits of laughter on stream, and gets lost in constructive tangents about life, such as having dated many girls by the name of Felicity, before and during streams. He loves playing horror games, much to the enjoyment of the community, as his calm marvel at the construction of the games suddenly transforms into panicked screams of fright.

He graduated from Harvey Mudd College with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, and went on to obtain his Masters degree in Interactive Media from USC Berkely in May 2011. He uses his background in media and experience with game design to critique the games he plays on stream as well as demonstrate how best to create a pleasant gaming experience.

Follow his journey towards success.

Starcraft: Brood War

Starcraft Brood War Logo

Since childhood, Sean has enjoyed playing Starcraft alongside his brother Nick "Tasteless" Plott. He began playing competitively as the Zerg in several tournaments, managing to place 12th in the 2004 World Cyber Games. He then scored 1st place in 2005, followed by 3rd in 2006. While still in college in 2009, after his competitive play, he launched a series in which he analyzed high level players: NaDa, Flash, Jaedong, and BoxeR. His goal was to break his analysis down into easily understood, important concepts in hope that average players could improve their skills.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Logo

With the release of Starcraft 2 in 2010, Sean was excited to continue his series by experimenting with new units and strategies, as well as discovering how professional players could creatively utilize them during gameplay. The awaited release of Starcraft 2 revived the Starcraft community in the West, and gave Sean the opportunity to shift focus from competitive play to casting tournaments that had begun appearing all over the USA. These included MLG, DreamHack, and the North American Star League. Sean still holds a place in his heart for Broodwar, and plans to continue his Dailies when Starcraft Remastered is released this summer.

Day[9]TV

Be A Better Gamer

While working on his Masters degree in 2009, Sean began a daily series by the name of Day[9]TV which proved to serve as a stress outlet; but not without simultaneously creating new stress. He started by watching replays from professional players and analyzing the strategies and errors they made. Usually, a show would broadcast three main replays in three different segments, focusing on only one race and strategy being used in each replay. Sean added additional shows throughout the week such as Funday Monday and Newbie Tuesday, where more basic and beginner optimization was the focus. Funday Monday overtime became one of his most anticipated shows and an enjoyable start to the work week for many viewers. The goal was to give viewers a different approach to their favorite games by limiting them to specific rules that usually made the game more challenging. For instance, players may sometimes be prevented from attacking, or may only be permitted to use drops. Nukes and Seuss was another popular alteration of the game in which players were forced to use nukes whenever possible and announce it with a Dr. Seuss style rhyme. Viewers then had the chance to submit their replays to Sean to be potentially featured in one of his upcoming shows. This overtime formed the saying "Day[9] made me do it" at the end of a match. As the community grew, Sean gave his viewers the nickname “DayKnights.”

In 2013, with constant game reviews, replays, and show preparations, Sean established Day[9]'s Day Off on Fridays in which he would stream and often critique any game of his choosing, focusing on the game’s design, mechanics, and aspects he felt the developers executed correctly. In 2014 he, alongside his friends Sean Bouchard and Bill Graner created a new show for Mondays called Mostly Walking. In it they replay some of their favorite classic adventure games, and see how they stood the test of time. Currently he is focusing on improving his DOTA 2 skills and streaming practice sessions with a coach.

Watch Day[9] Daily #100 and Daily #588 Below!

Magic: The Gathering

Day[9] MTG card in immortal pose

Sean is a big fan of card games. During his streams, he would occasionally discuss Magic the Gathering tournaments or Prereleases he attended and excitedly recall stories from said events during the intro to his dailies. He hosted a show with Geek & Sundry called Spellslinger, in which one of the members from Geek & Sundry challenged Sean to an MTG match using the latest cards. They then discussed new possible strategies and tips for the game.

Hearthstone

Artist drawing of Day[9] hearthstone card

His interest in Magic and Blizzard games fueled his decision to begin playing Hearthstone in 2014. The gameplay allowed for intense grinding in order to achieve Legend rank, but also exhibited the familiar enjoyment of Funday Mondays using fun decks built around interesting or potentially impractical mechanics. Viewers found it especially hilarious to see him get lucky with his Echo Control Mage, summoning a horde of molten giants on the field. This resulted in laughter as his opponent was then left without a clue as to what he should do in response.

Game Design at Artillery Games

Project Atlas RTS Battle Screenshot

In 2013, Sean announced he was working at Artillery Games as a game designer in Project Atlas, whose name was later changed to Guardians of Atlas. He and his team strived towards making this real-time multiplayer strategy game playable through web browsers, an impressive feat. In his streams, Sean often brought up his experience working on Atlas when discussing game design or particular game decisions developers made in the games he played. However, shortly after the release of its alpha version in 2016, the company closed down and Project Atlas ended.